Experience this
labyrinth of love

Labyrinth of Love''Photo by Chris Nash

The Rambert Dance Company will take to the stage at Nottingham’s Theatre Royal from March 6-8 as part of their Labyrinth Of Love Tour 2013.

The New Year has heralded a new era for Rambert Dance Company as it prepares to take up residency in its new home on the South Bank.

Construction is now well under way and the company recently celebrated the building’s Topping Out ceremony, when the highest part of the structure was put in place.

The £19.6m facility will not only enhance the work seen by audiences on stage but will offer unique opportunities for choreographic and music development, and double the reach of the company’s learning and participation work. Rambert moves into its new home in the autumn.

Inspired by the love poems and prose of eight women - including Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Mary Shelley, Sappho and with a nod to screen icon Elizabeth Taylor – Marguerite Donlon’s Labyrinth of Love aims to create a reflection of the bitterness, desire, longing, ecstasy, irony, tenderness, despair, hope, sadness and humour associated with the heart.

It is set to a commissioned score by one of America’s most performed composers, Michael Daugherty, and accompanied live on stage by a soprano. Production design is by renowned visual artist Mat Collishaw and set and costume designer Conor Murphy.

Labyrinth of Love is Marguerite Donlon’s debut work for Rambert and her first large scale work in the UK. Marguerite is currently director of ballet at the Saarländischen Staatstheater, Germany (Donlon Dance Company) for whom recent successes include Giselle: Reloaded, Faust and L’Enfant et les Sortilèges.

Previously, she danced with the Deutsche Oper Berlin and English National Ballet and during this time she was coached by many world-renowned artists including Natalia Makarova, Rudolf Nureyev and Sir Kenneth MacMillan.

The score for Labyrinth of Love is written by Grammy Award-winning Michael Daugherty, who first came to international attention for his symphony Metropolis and is cited by the League of American Orchestras as one of the ten most performed living American composers.

Past scores have paid musical homage to icons of contemporary pop culture such as Liberace, Elvis Presley, Jackie Onassis, even Barbie and Superman. It will be sung by soprano Kirsty Hopkins, who performs as a soloist and consort singer all over the world, at venues including the Usher Hall, Edinburgh, Sydney Opera House and Hong Kong Cultural Centre.

Mat Collishaw and Conor Murphy combine their unique skills for the production design. Collishaw is known for his shocking yet beautiful imagery, created primarily through photography and video. This will be his first work for a contemporary dance company. Conor Murphy is a set and costume designer whose work for opera, theatre and dance includes the Korean National Opera, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Abbey Theatre, Dublin and Bristol Old Vic.